Jim Simons Quotes

[In July 2014.] I wasn’t the fastest guy in the world. I wouldn’t have done well in an Olympiad or a math contest. But I like to ponder. And pondering things, just sort of thinking about it and thinking about it, turns out to be a pretty good approach.
Jim Simons

[In November 2000.] Those kinds of times… when everyone is running around like a chicken with its head cut off, that's pretty good for us…
Jim Simons

[In November 2006 on not unveiling Renaissance’s forecasting methods.] Of course we can't show the model or tell people how we calculate our forecasts. That would be like Warren Buffett telling the world what stocks he's buying before he buys them.
Jim Simons

[In August 2007 on losing 9% of one of his funds in eight days later gaining it back.] The culprit is not the basic system but our predictive overlay. When you've done your best, there isn't a great deal to apologize for, the event was a whirlwind that caught everyone by surprise. It certainly caught us by surprise. But not having anything to apologize for and not feeling bad are two different things - certainly, I feel bad for anyone losing money.
Jim Simons

[In January 2008.] One can predict the course of a comet more easily than one can predict the course of Citigroup's stock. The attractiveness, of course, is that you can make more money successfully predicting a stock than you can a comet.
Jim Simons

[In October 1996.] Patterns of price movement are not random. However, they're close enough to random…
Jim Simons

[In November 2000.] We have three criteria: If it's publicly traded, liquid and amenable to modeling, we trade it.
Jim Simons

[In November 2000.] We search through historical data looking for anomalous patterns that we would not expect to occur at random.
Jim Simons

[In November 2000.] I want a guy who knows enough math so that he can use those tools effectively but has a curiosity about how things work and enough imagination and tenacity to dope it out.
Jim Simons

[In December 2005.] Past performance is the best predictor of success.
Jim Simons

[In May 2009.] Luck plays a meaningful role in everyone’s lives.
Jim Simons

[In July 2014 on company culture.] A good atmosphere and smart people can accomplish a lot.
Jim Simons

[In July 1995 stocks are chosen based on] Signals generated by a series of proprietary predictive systems.
Jim Simons

[In October 1996 on always having to continue to develop new trading models before the current ones lose their effectiveness in doing technical trading.] The system is always leaking, and we keep having to add water to keep it ahead of the game. [On whether he will give away something as a hint.] Nothing.
Jim Simons

[In October 1996 on why the system Renaissance had used for several years had faltered.] It's supply and demand. If gold is discovered, then it gets harder to make money mining gold because everyone's competing with you.
Jim Simons

[In October 1996.] Patterns of price movement are not random. However, they're close enough to random so that getting some excess, some edge out of it, is not easy and not so obvious-thank God. God probably doesn't care. Thank whoever.
Jim Simons

[In October 1996 on his first successes.] Had nothing to do with mathematics. Happily, more things went for us than against us.
Jim Simons

[In October 1996 on his Medallion fund even though it had been closed since 1993.] Size works against you in a fund like this.
Jim Simons

[In October 1996.] There's no such thing as the goose that lays the golden egg forever.
Jim Simons

[In October 1996.] In this business it's easy to confuse luck with brains.
Jim Simons

[In 1999.] Efficient market theory is correct in that there are no gross inefficiencies. But we look at anomalies that may be small in size and brief in time. We make our forecast. Then, shortly thereafter, we re-evaluate the situation and revise our forecast and our portfolio. We do this all day long. We're always in and out and out and in. So we're dependent on activity to make money.
Jim Simons

[In November 2000 on a gala reception celebrating raising a record $1 million for the State University of New York at Stony Brook.] I told my wife, ‘We raised $1 million for Stony Brook’. She said, ‘Gross or net?’
Jim Simons

[In November 2000.] I have one guy who has a Ph.D. in finance. We don't hire people from business schools. We don't hire people from Wall Street. We hire people who have done good science.
Jim Simons

[In November 2000.] Luck, is largely responsible for my reputation for genius. I don’t walk into the office in the morning and say, ‘Am I smart today?’ I walk in and wonder, ‘Am I lucky today?’
Jim Simons

[In November 2000.] The things we are doing will not go away. We may have bad years, we may have a terrible year sometimes. But the principles we've discovered are valid.
Jim Simons

[In November 2000.] I wanted to do mathematics from the time I was 3. Literally. I would think about numbers and shapes.
Jim Simons

[In November 2000 looking back on taking the post of Chairman of the Stony Brook math department after he had been sacked from the Institute for Defense Analyses as a code breaker after he had made comments to Newsweek that he thought a New York Times Magazine was overly optimistic about the military effort in Vietnam.] I felt so powerless about being fired. I thought, ‘They can't fire you if you're chairman.’
Jim Simons

[In November 2000.] Chern-Simons offers a route to solve Poincare's conjecture, but it’s a difficult route, and there are other difficult routes.
Jim Simons

[In November 2000 on looking to invest $5,000 in wedding gifts soon after being married and finding that stocks bored him.] I went to a Merrill Lynch broker. He said ‘Try soybeans.’
Jim Simons

[In November 2000 on his investment in 1973 on turning some proceeds of an investment in a Colombian floor, tile and pipe company over to a mathematician whom he knew was trading commodities.] In eight months he had multiplied my money by ten times.
Jim Simons

[In November 2000 on shifting from fundamental analysis to a quantitative approach.] We started to think about a whole new way to look at futures.
Jim Simons

[In November 2000.] Inversion was the kiss of death. The fund was unhedged with respect to the yield curve.
Jim Simons

[In November 2000 on having a large, and in some ways gruesome painting of a lynx killing a rabbit in his office.] I used to have it in my house. My wife didn’t particularly like it.
Jim Simons

[In November 2000.] We treat these funds as instruments. But unlike the deutsche mark, managers change their character over time. It's messier to model those time series, but it's not impossible. We do our best.
Jim Simons

[In November 2000.] We search through historical data looking for anomalous patterns that we would not expect to occur at random. Our scheme is to analyze data and markets to test for statistical significance and consistency over time. Once we find one, we test it for statistical significance and consistency over time. After we determine its validity, we ask, ‘Does this correspond to some aspect of behavior that seems reasonable?’
Jim Simons

[In November 2000 on Franklin Electronic Publishers where he is the Chairman.] Whether Franklin will someday be a huge success, I don’t know.
Jim Simons

[In November 2000 on whether there was a connection between the math he did and his trading.] Absolutely none.
Jim Simons

[In November 2000.] Mathematics and science are two different notions, two different disciplines. By its nature, good mathematics is quite intuitive. Experimental science doesn't really work that way. Intuition is important. Making guesses is important. Thinking about the right experiments is important. But it's a little more broad and a little less deep. So the mathematics we use here can be sophisticated. But that's not really the point. We don't use very, very deep stuff. Certain of our statistical approaches can be very sophisticated. I'm not suggesting it's simple. I want a guy who knows enough math so that he can use those tools effectively but has a curiosity about how things work and enough imagination and tenacity to dope it out.
Jim Simons